Life can seem like a wild goose chase until you take a stroll in the park
Friends suggested that we meet for a Sunday morning walk around Regent’s Park. They live close by and we must have done this walk with them hundreds of times over some two decades. It’s something of a weekend ritual if we are all in town. But for the past 10 weeks, since the dog died, we haven’t been to the park. It’s just felt, well, wrong without Macy careering through the gate to locate them, jumping up to kiss them. But we move ahead.
A city park can be a glorious thing and, on Sunday, the place was alive with people like us, doing little more than what the Victorians would have called “taking the air”. Folk wending through the new Queen Elizabeth II Garden, heading to the formal gardens, paying too much for bad coffee, letting children and dogs off the leash along The Broad Walk. There was life and renewal all around.
“Look at that goose!” I said as a hissing mother manoeuvred her flock of distracted goslings out of our way and on to a nearby stretch of grass. There was a general cooing. Then, after a few seconds, one of those questions from the other half – normally the wise owl in this relationship – that makes you wonder what’s going on in his brain.
“Sorry but how come all of you know that’s a goose and not a duck?” We all explained a few of the giveaways: size, the shape of the bill, that one honks and the other quacks. “I really don’t get it,” he retorted, his face sporting the sort of frustrated countenance that I normally produce in my long-suffering Spanish teacher. We might need to go back to basics: “Look at the pictures, which is the elephant and which is the lion?”
Living in a city, in the heart of a place like London, the shifting of the seasons is often gauged by looking at the weather app on your phone. Yet in a great park you see all the subtleties of the seasons arriving and departing up close. The first horse chestnuts – conkers to us Brits – falling from the trees signal that summer is closing down. The arrival of redwings from the Baltic on Regent’s Park’s football pitches let you know that winter is really here. As we walked around the park on Sunday, I realised how much I have missed doing this parade through nature. It felt like adjusting the dial on a radio and finally picking up the right signal.
During the depths of the coronavirus pandemic, the park was our saviour. The laps became a daily ritual, with all four of us when rules allowed. And in that park, the four of us have shared successes, discussed life with a frankness that I value and made each other laugh. There’s something about this promenade, this modest nature-infused perambulation, that gets you talking. And we are not alone in this feeling.
As we pass other walkers you hear snatches of their conversations – bastard boyfriends, ailing mothers, holiday plans gone awry, a problematic flan recipe – all being picked apart among the roses, below the boughs of ancient trees. Perhaps it’s the expanse of the place, the openness and the big skies, but parks are made for confessionals, assignations and problem pastry debates. A park can also offer a sanctuary. Teenage couples, away from parents’ eyes, canoodle on the grass. Women in abayas sit laughing and gossiping on park benches, young girls play football with no annoying boys around. Regent’s Park’s surrounds are home to all walks of life, it serves everyone, provides a forum, a place to play, a democratic space. And all delivered essentially by some trees and grass.
As we departed the park, we agreed to meet here again as soon as schedules coincide. And I made a promise to myself that I will buy the other half a gift, a book, Wild: A Child’s Guide to the Animal Kingdom.
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